Mark (the Dad)
I had collected a new Dawes Super Galaxy touring bike the week before, so needed to try it out. I also needed to continue breaking in a new Brooks leather saddle (birthday present from my wife). Renowned as the most comfortable after it is broken in, it has been akin to sitting on a brick thus far. After my first 200 miles over a weekend I had difficulty sitting down for a week. I shall persevere.
Sam is feeling the need to start working on his fitness, but since planning this trip has managed to get his foot run over by a car whilst walking home from school; a curious example of teenage clumsiness in my eyes, pure unavoidable misfortune in his. How will he manage with traffic in Asia I wonder?
We planned to set off at dawn on Saturday to ensure our arrival in daylight. However both unwisely accepted invitations out the night before. Too old or insensitive by now for hangovers, I arise at 6am to belatedly begin changing my brick-like saddle onto my new bike, check fixings, squirt some oil around, find some suitable cycling attire and pack an overnight bag.
I get Sam’s bike out of the shed. I really must stop trying to do everything for him before the big trip to Japan.
I hunt through overfilled drawers, cupboards, garage and shed in poor light, trying to find critical tools, pump, thermal undergarments etc and blaming everyone but myself for my lack of success. However, I am annoyingly positive and wide-awake in the mornings so I eventually find them.
Sam does not share my morning good humour. I have learnt to speak to him only when absolutely necessary until mid-morning. Perhaps this is the secret with all teenagers – especially those with hangovers and an injured foot facing a 75 mile cycle ride in cold light November rain.
I worry that such experiences might change Sam’s mind about the ‘big trip’. Since his idea to do this trip when he was 10, we have done two or three longish rides. One when he was about 14 was from Canterbury to Gent (Belgium) in February. I chose a canal towpath route thinking to avoid hills. We avoided the hills but met with biting arctic winds and hail for days as it swept across the flatlands from the Dutch and Belgian coast, reducing us to red faced stupefied figures cycling at walking pace. We had made it there and back and I told Sam he was a hero and would never have to face such a challenge on our Japan trip, but it took him a few months and a summer trip from Bristol to Canterbury to convince him he would be capable of getting up and cycling sixty-odd miles day after day for nearly a year.
So having got Sam out of bed at 8am, hidden my irritation at him stumbling grumpily around the house for an hour, we set off. The roads were already busy and I was embarrassed by not being able to work out how the gears work on my new bike.
“I can change down but I can’t see how they change back up” I shout to Sam.
“Pull over and turn the bike upside-down” he replies.
“That won’t help, there’s just no lever” I say with characteristic veiled irritation.
We stop. He is right and having worked out that the brake levers double as gearlevers we continue quickly on our way. These things must be designed to make the uninitiated feel stupid - especially effective at humiliating fathers in front of their sons it would seem.
We make good progress and Sam’s foot is not suffering from pedalling. My ‘brick’ seems to be morphing into a saddle at last. I am already chastising myself in my head for the late start and not wanting to boringly encourage Sam into an early night the week before his 18th birthday. But the outcome will surely mean us cycling on a busy road into Lewes in failing light at best. This characteristic of the father taking on too much responsibility for things not going right in family operations will be a familiar one to many. Nobody forces it upon us, but we beat ourselves up over it (the same as our own father did) - Easy to see in retrospect, but hard to avoid at the time.
Sam’s humour has picked-up by mid-morning as expected and he is managing to keep up despite his injury and hangover (non-existent of course). We resolve not to have a main rest until lunch at ‘The Great House’ (a gourmet pub in Gill’s Green), and as we get nearer, Sam is regularly overtaking me - especially on big up-hill sections for which I have less of an appetite these days.
Having stopped for too long and eaten too much we renew our quest to reach the horizon and make our way through busy class-divided Sussex villages, smelling the local aromas and taking in their varying local lives. A bicycle is slow enough to allow you to catch most things, but fast enough to notice the differences between a variety of villages, towns and cities in a single day. If this remains a valuable education for me, imagine how much more it must be in the life of a teenage boy – in sharp contrast to their PlayStation and iPod insulated worlds.
My wife, a Child & Adolescent Therapist, reminds me that a father and son experiencing this together, comparing their contrasting thoughts on it, is equally valuable and equally rare these days.
After many thigh-burning miles we arrive finally in the pretty town of Lewes with a pleasing downhill run into the centre. Resisting the temptation to press on, on a busy dual carriageway in the dark to Brighton (where we will stay with our friends Kate & Graham), we head for the station and take a train there with early revellers on their way for a night of clubbing. I wonder if Sam would rather be with them than with me in his geeky helmet and day-glow waistcoat. I don’t ask.
In Brighton we head up the hill from the station and I insist on stopping to get some wine and cider (nectar to cyclists) from an off-license. Sam asks a man the worse for drink for directions (which I typically insist I don’t need). His misdirection causes me to nearly miss the turning. I swerve suddenly one handed and unable to reach the brakes due to the carrier bag of bottles. I clip a wall and the bag rips, spilling its contents crashing to the ground. We arrive at our friends’ house with only two bottles of cider, hissing with the tops half off.
After 75 miles without mishaps we have crashed and burned 100 yards from our destination. I am hard to console, though Sam tries valiantly. In my mind I have failed.
Sam (the Son)
It had been a long time since my last cycle ride so I was full of excitement because it makes a change to the routine of my ever so tedious life. This may be a problem since cycling to Japan will involve day after day of the wheels and pedals going round.
It is sometimes a struggle to keep enthusiastic about the trip, however, being young, there is so much I don’t yet understand and so much to see and I remind myself of this. This trip will hopefully help me to understand who I am and will give me a greater understanding of various cultures - I’d be a fool not to go.
Cycling to Brighton didn’t seem very challenging compared to what we have done before and what lies ahead. I was full of confidence, my only challenge being unrelated to the cycling. I knew it may be difficult to keep on the right side of my dad and help him to avoid stressful situations, as he is a bit overworked at present. The first test came within the first 5 minutes, he couldn’t work out how to change the gears on his new bike. The situation seemed to engulf my dad in internal panic that we might not be able to work his bike and so would have to drive to Brighton. He will hopefully relax a bit more when we are away from home for a year, but it will no doubt be difficult at times.
After the first 3 hours of cycling I became very worried about how unfit I had become. My legs were burning constantly as I peddled. On the bright side, my foot (which a week before had been run over by a car) was feeling absolutely fine. Almost like it was doing it good.
By midday I had got past the burning pain in my legs and was very positive after a well received lunch in Gill’s Green. By this point we had already cycled nearly two thirds of the way, so I was pretty chuffed and coping very well.
A big problem for me when I cycle with my dad is that he is still far faster than me and constantly staring at your fathers butt for 75miles is not great. This day it seemed as though I would never be able to keep up but every time he waited for me I caught up in only a couple of minutes so nothing drastic there.
I was glad to arrive at Kate and Graham’s but could have carried on a lot further, which was good for me to know. We talked to Kate and Graham all evening about the trip to Japan and I went to sleep that night feeling very happy with life.
My dad’s bony old bum is apparently painless the following morning, after a speedy 25 miles over and around the downs with Graham. I need one of those saddles! My super-soft gel saddle has left me with an ache that makes me walk like a bandy-legged farmhand. I can’t imagine how that would feel multiplied by 300-odd days. I stay behind to make cakes with Graham & Kate’s kids, concerned that my dad will think less of me for it (which he tries to show me he doesn’t). We have a year and over 12,000 miles to work those kinds of misunderstandings out. The main thing I took away from this short trip was that I have learnt to stay positive. I feel like I may have matured in the past few months. I got on well with my dad and it was relatively easy for me the majority of the day. Another key thing I learnt was to ignore the time. I found that if I didn’t check the time or check the distance we had covered, the day and distance would pass very swiftly. It’s great to feel prepared.
This blog has now been replaced by a newer version please follow the link:
http://longroadhardlessons.blogspot.com
.jpg)